Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni said that his country is considering moving its embassy to Jerusalem.
“If a friend says, ‘I want your embassy here, rather than there,’ I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. We are studying that,” Museveni said in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Kampala on Monday.
The remark comes amid a visit by Netanyahu to the country’s capital, where Netanyahu also met with Sudan’s transitional leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who announced that the two leaders agreed to gradually normalize ties.
“There are two things that we want to very much to achieve, and we discussed in this visit,” Netanyahu said in his press conference with Museveni.
“One is direct flights from Israel to Uganda—direct flights because that will enable our friendship to flourish. And second, I have a simple suggestion that you’ll have time to consider, Mr. President, my friend. You open an embassy in Jerusalem. I’ll open an embassy in Kampala. And we hope to do this in the near future.”
Israel currently does not have an embassy in Uganda; the Israeli ambassador to neighboring Kenya serves as ambassador there. Only two countries currently have an embassy in Jerusalem—the United States and Guatemala—however, a number of other countries have announced their support for such a move.
Netanyahu, who made his fifth visit to Africa in less than four years on Monday, is hoping to increase cooperation with Uganda is fields such as agriculture, education and innovation.
